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I know you were probably just going for the joke, but corn can grow on slopes if they're not too steep. Contour farming would be highly recommended, as well as strip cropping to keep the soil from eroding. Corn isn't the best at making dirt stay put.

What are the microwaves going to do to the nitrogen fixing microbes in the soil? What about the worms that keep the soil tilled and fertile?
I'm wondering if the vinyard owner is going to wake up next year and find his land unfarmable.
Not to mention the question about what happens to other wildlife, or people.

The boundary of effect on the pain ray is pretty distinct. There was an episode of Futureweapons a while back where the host and some colonel were standing a few feet apart from each other; one was affected by the pain ray while the other wasn't.

So, you could aim the edge of the beam parallel to the ground to avoid any undesired effects to the soil (if there even are any - I'm guessing that the beam doesn't penetrate very far at all).

As for other wildlife, I would assume that birds and such would learn to

What are the microwaves going to do to the nitrogen fixing microbes in the soil? What about the worms that keep the soil tilled and fertile?

I'm wondering if the vinyard owner is going to wake up next year and find his land unfarmable.

Not to mention the question about what happens to other wildlife, or people.

First of all, I think they'll find out very fast (in about a year or so:-) if there are measurable harmful effects.

Secondly, I think the harmful effects would be limited to the microbes at the surface, not covered by any dirt, ie. those microbes that are already dead due to UV radiation...;-)

Also if it affects the worms, they'll go underground very fast (as worms go, which is in fact pretty fast considering the scale). Flying insects might suffer, but I'm not sure if that's good or bad for most (non-insec

Flying insects might suffer, but I'm not sure if that's good or bad for most (non-insect-pollinated) farming.

Even for insect pollinated farming it's probably irrelevant. This is used for elimination of frost on frost-sensitive crops, which means application during freezing temperatures, or near-freezing temps with clear night skies. Very low occurrence of pollination going on at those times. I can see a potential mis-use to try and eliminate pests at other times, but the energy cost may preclude its use for that.

I don't think greed is an actual issue. I would imagine that there are two distinct major camps of people that work for Raytheon and similar companies. People that feel that they are doing the right work, and people who just don't think about it at all.

Some people who work for these companies (a friend of mine included) genuinely feel that they are doing the right work. They've come to the ethical conclusion that Raytheon and similar companies are doing work that makes them and other people safer. Think 2nd Amendment types who scream about the need to have a personal arsenal of weapons with which to "defend" themselves. Not that I agree with these people, but it's a legitimate perspective.

Then there are people who just don't think. I would say that this is the minority of the people who work in the more intellectual ends of the military industry. You have to remember that half of people are below average, and it doesn't relate just to academic (or cognitive) intelligence. Socioaffective (or emotional and interpersonal) intelligence is also an important mental factor. These people view their work in the same way that all of the rest of us view our work, just something to do between 9am and 5pm every weekday.

Of course, there's variations on the theme, but I'd say that in the end 90% of people in the military industry can be categorised one way or the other.

Thinking that one is doing good is often just clever self-delusion, unfortunately.

My co-workers, friends and most everyone I encounter seem to think that I am a peace-loving type. I go out in the woods and camp, take pictures of beaches and flowers, write about my feelings. I've opposed certain wars and capital punishment for various reasons.... Yet, I don't oppose them on any philosophical grounds. Quite the contrary, actually. I think wars are necessary. I think having the biggest and most horrifyingly de

I might be wrong here - but doesn't the fact that microwaves pass through ice crystals more easily than squishyt fleshy stuff mean they'll cook the oranges and leave them with a light dusting of frost?

I think you're both partially right. I don't think the goal is to "blast the crops with enough microwaves to cook them," I think the point is "warm the plants & fruit/vegetables a few degrees so that frost doesn't accumulate on them. In other words, put out enough radiation to keep your oranges & trees at a comfortable 50 degrees ("or even room temperature-ish"), even if the air gets down to 30 degrees. The point isn't to bombard them with microwaves until they're cooked, it's to warm the plant j

Maybe this "Active Denial System" could be deployed on ships to ward off Somalian pirates? I mean, deploy a series of these around the perimeter of the deck of the ship, so the crew doesn't actually need to aim them, just flip a switch. This would create a "ring of pain" around the ship. The crew can be holed up in their safe room.

First Mate: "Captain! There's pirates off the starboard bow!"

Captain: "All hands to the safe room!"

In the safe room . . .

Captain: "Now let me read the instructions. Set power to 1000 W. Cook until pirates have fled. Cooking times will very depending on how tough or tender the pirates are.

Funny perhaps, but there is a degree of logic in this. A non lethal way to move them away from the ship, then you put cheap, fake towers on the ships that don't have the $$$ for the whole system. This makes it a version of Russian Roulette for the pirates. This would seem a humane way to reduce pirate problems off Somalia.

Then again, I'm not totally against just shooting them via snipers, but this would be less expensive and likely more effective if all you have to do is throw a switch. Assuming you can

was proposed in a 70's IEEE publication I read while killing time at the computer center help desk as a student.It was thought at that time that microwaves could be used safely to heat the occupants directly, without raising theambient temperature. Apparently this idea did not fly after later scrutiny.

you know, bees, birds, ladybugs and other beneficial creatures. And how about soil biology? without healthy dirt, you end up dumping more chemicals on your food to get in to grow (nitrogen, etc). I'm not a PETA nut, hell I love bacon, but just wondering. If people run from that thing, everything in the orchard may too.

You do know you don't want flying and walking things in your orchard right?
Also the cutoff area of effect is pretty sharp you can aim it so it doesn't affect the ground.
Everything that's flying/walking around your fruit trees should probably not be doing that. And even if it did it'd leave the zone pretty fast.

Everything that's flying/walking around your fruit trees should probably not be doing that.

You mean like the creatures that fly around and help your plants pollinate so they actually, you know, bear fruit? I guess the point could be made that this would only be used when frost was a risk and therefore no pollinating would be occurring anyway.

I doubt the microwaves would penetrate that far into soil, and it seems counterintuitive to construct a device that blankets a large area with microwaves instead of just sweeping the fruits once in a while.

2. "Operation Plowshare [wikipedia.org], better known as Project Plowshare, not to be confused with the anti-nuclear Plowshares Movement, was the overall United States term for the development of techniques to use nuclear explosives for peaceful construction purposes."

why do people work for Raytheon? What sequence of moral thoughts goes through their heads?

Because they're also producing agricultural tools perhaps? Say it's for the money if you want, but results are results.

Okay, so the agricultural application is a recent development. And the military-industrial complex is full of greed. But if your question is whether anyone at all can work for a defense contractor with a clear conscience, there are—believe it or not—still people who hold onto the hope that the American military is in fact capable of bringing about more freedom and democracy in the world, no matter how poorly it may have been used recently. Just because you don't see it that way doesn't make them wrong. Not to mention, there are also people with enough knowledge of history to understand that, even if defending our home soil from invasion by a conventional foreign military is a farfetched idea right now, the only reason it stays that way is because our military is so damned powerful.

("To turns swords into ploughshares" is cynical nonsense, of course - why really? Is it just the money?)

Attempting to metaphorically turn swords to plowshares is uncynical, almost by definition. Or are you saying they're disingenuous when they say that?

No matter the technology, users are the same everywhere. They don't read the entire documentation, don't work thru the examples, and blame the technology when old, obsolete methods are forced into an incompatible framework. SSDD

Okay, so the agricultural application is a recent development. And the military-industrial complex is full of greed.

You might not realize this, but very few people in the US still seem to have an issue with greed (or sloth and gluttony, for that matter). No, the real issue people tend to have with the military-industrial complex tends to be the whole killing people for money (again, very few people in the US seem to per se have an issue with the military killing people). The fact that "killing people" has changed to "defrosting oranges" doesn't really change the amorality of it, any more than the various unethical WW2 German and Japanese medical experiments being collected and used by Allied doctors after the war (fruit of the poison tree and all). In short, that's why there's a question of morality in this instance.

But if your question is whether anyone at all can work for a defense contractor with a clear conscience, there arebelieve it or notstill people who hold onto the hope that the American military is in fact capable of bringing about more freedom and democracy in the world, no matter how poorly it may have been used recently.

Yea, um, you don't bring freedom and democracy with a gun any more than you bring religion with a sword. That is, while it might eventually have that effect, you do so only through amoral means and potentially leaving a multi-generational grudge against its foundation which is likely to eventually unshackle people from that imposed following/belief once they become enlightened to just what was done to make so many people follow along. If there does exist any real long-standing system of belief that can and should be followed, subjugating people to follow it isn't the way for that system to exist. Of course, I like how you use the word "freedom" instead of liberty. Considering one of the main tenets of liberty is a lack of outside coercion, it'd be clear why we couldn't spread that through force even if we wanted to.

Not to mention, there are also people with enough knowledge of history to understand that, even if defending our home soil from invasion by a conventional foreign military is a farfetched idea right now, the only reason it stays that way is because our military is so damned powerful.

That'd be a point, if that's what we were developing the technology for. But, clearly this sort of technology is more a "what if" of technology in that regard; if it came down to defending the border, I'm pretty sure the military would prefer killing the armed invaders, not merely causing them pain. So, instead, the technology seems only well suited for other military and non-military applications, directed at unarmed civilians (this agricultural benefit seems in the same scope of university researchers who claim just about anything they do, no matter how mundane, has military application). In short, yes conceptually a need for a military is prudent. But, unless a person has joined the military or defense contracting in some fashion with the mind to change the military towards that just end, then simply riding along with the colossus with some lofty ideals rings quite hollow. Those who are working for change, though, I can see being, if not with a clear conscience, at least with one that's a lot less murky than those who would first excuse the military or defense contractors' actions and only perhaps later acknowledging that in a very limited circumstance, those actions might have been not entirely warranted.

Yea, um, you don't bring freedom and democracy with a gun any more than you bring religion with a sword.

Bringing religion with the sword has been wildly successful. Islam, for example, is the largest religion in the world today precisely because of its military efforts in the first few centuries of its existence. Bringing freedom and democracy doesn't work as well because those things require voluntary participation of the group you're "freeing". If they don't want it collectively, then it won't stick.

That's just plain ignorant. Islam is the largest religion in the world today, but not for that reason. Islam was primarily spread via traders. They'd go in to a principality and tell the local ruler that they'd cut them a discount if they converted. They'd also promise to share their technology with them. At that point in time the various Islamic centers of learning were advanced, I mean really advanced, compared with just about everybody else.

That is wrong. Islam was primarily spread by the sword. For example, the entire Middle East, North Africa, and India were all converts by the sword. Indonesia, Malaysia, etc were converts via trade, but they form a minority of current Muslims in the world. And need I remind you that Islam would not have been in a position to make such offers, if it didn't have a vast economic base to begin with?

That's the reason why there's so much diversity and it's such a large religion.

Much of the diversity of the religion predates this period. For example, the great Shi'ite/Sunni split came shortl

Very true. It worked wonders for the Europeans when they conquered South America.

Islam, for example, is the largest religion in the world today precisely because of its military efforts in the first few centuries of its existence.

While a lot of military expansion certainly did happen under Islamic leadership, it really isn't the largest religion in the world. Not even close.

Islam has somewhere between 1.1 and 1.3 billion followers. Christianity somewhere between 2.1 and 2.3 billion. But nice try though.North and South America is close to exclusively Christian. Most of sub-Saharan African is as well.

India is 80% Hindu and a "paltry" 140 million Muslims. China has somewhere between 20 and 100 million. Even the "massive population" in the middle east only amounts to about 346 million people, and not all of them are Muslim. Hell, the largest population of Muslims in any one country is in Indonesia, where some 88% of its 230 million inhabitants are Muslim (202 million).

By comparison the US of A counts between 58 and 82% Christians (179 to 253 million). In the EU it's about 75% (some 375 million).

So yeah... we, the people in the West, are certainly under siege by a religious army that far outnumbers our own numbers. I mean - we barely have a two to one advantage. That's so unfair.

Islam may get a lot of airtime in our media, but then again - so did (not really in a)-balloon-boy, Michael Jacksons death, Janet Jackson's nipple and Miss (OMG, same-sex marriage is like so gay, ya-know) America. And while quite a lot of that attention is negative, because some idiots are blowing themselves up, stoning women and otherwise behaving like idiots, why should we judge all of them by the behaviour of a few loud idiots?

How would people in the US feel, if the rest of the world judged them, by the behaviour of a small minority of their idiots? Wait... you already know what that's like, and they keep telling us that it's unfair to judge them in that way.

Islam, for example, is the largest religion in the world today precisely because of its military efforts in the first few centuries of its existence.

While a lot of military expansion certainly did happen under Islamic leadership, it really isn't the largest religion in the world. Not even close.

It's funny because that's a common Christian theme - that they're persecuted, that they're the underdogs, the minority, even when they have an overwhelming majority. It's a lot easier to feel self-righteous (another

In my experience, there are a lot more of us defense contractors on slashdot than the angry anti-raytheon guy would like to admit. Anytime I post anything related to intelligence or military operations, I'm pleasantly surprised at the amount of quality discussion that ensues (rebutting the tin-foil hat, dirty hippie, libertard majority that linger around here).

Well your question is provocative, implying that it is morally wrong to work in defense. I merely posit that your view point is more out of the mainstream than the slashdot community thinks, based on how many of us willingly work in defense with none of the moral anguish you are implying.

My only implication is that people who work at Raytheon have made a justification that is is moral, kinda the opposite of what you're suggesting. I want to understand what the justification is.

I can't imply that it is morally wrong unless I assume a set of moral principles, which I have not done. All I can do from the PoV of establishing correctness is understand the moral principles someone presents to me and establish whether "it is moral to work at Raytheon" follows.

You are asking that somebody justify taking a job in the defense industry based on morality. I can only guess you suggest that means it is inherently immoral, otherwise you wouldn't be seeking justification.

I can justify it on two grounds. The world needs a defense industry and it is a lucrative and rewarding career. I could just as easily design training for banking, government, insurance, but defense pays better than all of those, and there is nothing immoral about the industry.

What's there to understand other than they provide good salaries, rewarding careers, and there's nothing to morally approve or disapprove of?

Why do people work for Sony with the evil rootkits? Why do people work for Microsoft with their well-known shortcuts-to-protect-bottom-line, or Apple and their famous walled garden? Somebody will always (and invariable inaccurately) find something they disapprove of from a corporation. Be self-employed, if you must.

Reminds me of this from :
"http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/the-secret-life-of-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-20100521-w1um.html
", mostly at Melbourne University - with stints at the Australian National University in Canberra - but never graduated, disenchanted, he says, with how many of his fellow students were conducting research for the US defence system."
According to Assange, the US Defence Advance Research Project Agency was funding research which involved optimising the effici

It may shock you to learn but plenty of people are perfectly ok with the idea of developing weapons. They understand that human history is fraught with wars, and that things often go badly for the losers of those wars, sometimes they are completely wiped out even. Thus they are fine with the idea that we ought to have the very best weapons for our own military. They understand that even if the US did give up all armaments, the rest of the world would not.

People work for Raytheon because it is a place where you can do interesting engineering, and they aren't troubled by the fact that it has military applications.

While you can certainly say the world would be a better place if humans stopped fighting, you are naive if you think that Raytheon stopping the development of armaments would lead to that.

After looking at the body of a dead girl, slaughtered for the crime of going to school, I decided that wasn't happening to my daughters while I'm alive. The idealist bullshit here is nice, and I bought into it until I realized that the consequences would be slavery. Literally. War is a disgusting, brutal thing, but I now know why it's worth it.

Godwin's Law: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." Once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.

Reductio ad Hitlerum, also argumentum ad Hitlerum, (dog Latin for "reduction to Hitler" or "argument to Hitler," respectively) is an ad hominem or ad misericordiam argument, and is an informal fallacy. Engaging in this fallacy is sometimes known as playing the Nazi card, by analogy to playing the race card.

To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a Nazi is just a well-known example of some of the worst in the human race. As the extreme terminator of a range definition whose other end was "Greek Democracy", it sets an appropriate boundary

No, the primary reason there will never be peace in the Middle East is because there is exactly ONE democracy (Israel) surrounded by a bunch of theocracies. The one pseudo democracy (Egypt) has had the same "elected" official since the discovery of electricity.

While I think you make a great point here, I don't think it would work on many people.

Most people who are pro war would say that the muslims are a threat. Whether they are or not is not a concern to them. In their mind, the muslims ARE a threat. And thus it's fine to kill millions of them. Of course, that's exactly what the Nazis argument was too...

what is the moral framework which has enabled you to justify the ends? And what was the argument leading to your conclusion?

A multitude of thoughts here.

On death: Car designers also have to deal with the statistical fact that somebody is going to die in the vehicle they design. Likely multitudes.

So, Come from it from a different angle. Whether car or weapon design, come at it from the idea that the person is either a sociopath on some level, or that he's a patriot. In designing a new weapon, sure, I'm going to be aware that it WILL be misused. But, on some level, I'm convinced that it will be misused less than it will be us

This answer is inadequate, and can be used to justify the production of weaponry for any regime from Ancient Greek Democracy to Hitler's Nazism. "Well, look at what has happened in the past - we must be strong or we'll be crushed!" is the mantra of every abusive government.

That might be true, but in deciding to work for a company involved in military research and development you have to consider the nation that the military is attached to. Now, if you believe that the USA and it's military are akin to Nazi Germany then you would have a strong moral argument for not working in military research and development. I would posit that most people from the United States don't feel that our nation is like Nazi Germany and therefore the morality of the decision changes.

You can pretend that what your government actually does with the weaponry is not my department, but you're bright enough to see your link in the causal chain of events. So unless you're exercising wilful intellectual dishonesty your brain has at some point justified the ends. What I want to understand is: what is the moral framework which has enabled you to justify the ends? And what was the argument leading to your conclusion?

It's pretty simple. Countries which don't prepare for war eventually get conqu

It's not causing me sleepless nights that I have decided to work at Raytheon (or similar) because I don't work at Raytheon (or similar).

You and a few ACs have come out with the "it's fun and I just don't care if a bunch of strangers are horribly oppressed and/or killed" answer and it's the most credible so far. But I'd appreciate an attempt to explain what's brought you to thinking like this. You weren't just born with that attitude. It developed somehow. Can you ask yourself how it developed? I am interest

I've actually given this a lot of thought, and had a girlfriend who didn't like it about me, but I'll try to explain.

I'm not an uncaring person, I care a great deal about friends and family and would do almost anything for them; I'm even kind to strangers I encounter. But when I read about people getting killed on the news I don't feel anything.

There is a lot of suffering in the world. War causes a lot of suffering, but so does famine, diseases, natural disasters and other things. To me it seems dis

How about drawing the line somewhere you might consider manageable? Or, if you're not sure what you can manage, try somewhere almost arbitrary. Then adjust over time to accommodate your life without becoming totally uncaring.

I am reminded (frequently) of the story about the boy throwing washed up sea creatures back into the sea. An old man approaches him and mockingly remarks, "You'll never save them all, you know."

In Nazi Germany there were people who did not particulary like hitler or the war doing military research (disclaimer: my grandfather was one of them).

In Nazi Germany it was far more difficult to stand up and refuse to do particular work on moral grounds. It's true that you will do a lot of things when you fear for your life, right down to Sonderkommando duty - but still other Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, political dissidents and other deviants[tm] remained faithful to their principles to the moment a gun/gas chamber was presented to them. But none of us have been forced to make that sort of c

I think you're missing the point, the argument has multiple moral characteristics. Say I have the choice of working for company A or company B.

A claims to make weapons purely as defensive tools to protect people from other nations weapons. Maybe they work on missile shield technology that has purely defensive capabilities and zero offensive capabilities. Now, say company B does the same type of research but instead of a missile shield they are using the technology to thwart other nations missile shields

Are you just going by the Slashdot article summary, or are you actually aware of what Raytheon builds? No-one who applied to work at Raytheon assuming that they build peacemaking equipment to reduce the suffering of war would be given a job - it'd be a classic case of showing a lack of interest in your employer at interview.

Are you aware of who Raytheon contracts to and for what purposes their clients buy those tools, or are you assuming that all its clients fight wars for defensive purposes and with the aim to create a minimum of suffering?

Raytheon isn't staffed by idiots, and, "well, they don't really know what's going on," isn't an answer. Because they know what's going on, I want to understand how they justify their employment. Everyone so far has come out with one of the extremes:

"because I don't care and just want a fun job/money" (credible, if somewhat pathetic); or

"because without firms like Raytheon my daughter would be raped in the streets by the enemy" (nonsense).

2 is actually pretty fair, not so much nonsense.Rape happens a lot, of course the soldiers on our side are just as inclined towards it but if you don't think women on the losing sides in conflicts tend to get raped a lot then you're deluded.

"or are you assuming that all its clients fight wars for defensive purposes and with the aim to create a minimum of suffering"

Does someone working at GM think all it's clients drive responsibly and sober?

No. I don't want to put words in people's mouths, but there are many possible arguments, such as Darwinian "it's animal nature to want to dominate" - with individual, regional or racist bases; or "white man's burden" style reasoning which dominated British Empire. But these are just scantily outlined first thoughts. I'm looking for a sound thread of reasoning adequate for someone who has actually decided to spend his life working somewhere like that.

Your result: We are overrun by the (non-existent, but that's by the by) superpower Muslim bogeyman.

Your conclusion: Existing military strategies are necessary.

Possible alternative: Limited military for the purposes of national defence combined with strong diplomacy and multilateral arms limitation treaties. Abandonment of defence research and production with the purpose of supporting oppression and endless war.

First, can you agree that "war" - with all its ugliness, misery, and violence - is sometimes a moral and justifiable course of action? You don't have to agree that it always is, or even that it "frequently" is - but if we can't agree that some use of military force is morally justified, then we have no basis for discussion, and I'll call you a smelly treehugging hippie, you can call me a dirty miltaristic ape, and we can stop the conversation right there.

If we can agree that sometimes war is justifiable, then let's back up and consider a couple wars that we can probably consider to be justified - the NATO involvement in the Kosovo war, and the UN involvement in Operation Desert Storm back in the early 90's. Both of these involved HEAVY multilateral diplomacy from NATO & the UN, and in both cases, diplomacy failed. I don't want to bring the current conflicts in Afghanistan & Iraq into this because both are fraught with politics far beyond the scope of whether or not the conflict there is justifiable, and I've no wish to sit here engaging in "Bush Lied People Died" / "Freedom Fries for Patriots" bumper-sticker-level bullshit soundbites - it's counterproductive, and neither side is capable of being objective about it.

So, diplomacy failed in Kosovo & Kuwait, and regrettably, the only course left was to deploy military forces in order to end the fighting in Kosovo & to restore Kuwaiti sovereignty. In other words - American, Canadian, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, British, Irish, French, German, Belgian, Spanish etc (name a country if yours was involved and isn't on this list - it's not an exhaustive list by any means) boys and girls were going to be fed into a meat grinder in order to accomplish the goals that diplomacy had failed to achieve. This is a horrible decision, and should never be made lightly and without long, sober thought.

Now, is where we're going to diverge I suspect. In a case like that, where young men and women are being deployed into a warzone on behalf of me and/or the rightfully elected government of my country, I consider it my absolute moral imperative to provide those young men and women with the best weapons and defensive tools my mind can create for them, in the hopes that every single one of them will come home to their families and other loved ones safely. If that means they're facing down people with machetes and rocks with an M-60 and a Blackhawk helicopter, I don't give a shit about the force imbalance there - if the citizens of the country that we're facing were too poor or too immoral to provide their own young men and women with better weapons, that's not my problem - they're not acting on the behalf of my government, they're not acting on behalf of me, and if it were up to me, they'd lay down those rocks and machetes, make nice, and let all of the young men and women from MY country come home.

Asking an 18 year old from New Orleans (or Galway, or Beijing, or Moscow, or... name our city) to charge a hardened bunker full of Serbs with nothing to lose, using nothing but a pistol and a folding knife because we've "abandoned defense research" is immoral. Suggesting that telling a group of 18 year olds pinned down in a deadly ambush that "sorry, we don't have any A-10's available to provide close air support because we've abandoned defense research and engaged in arms limitation treaties, looks like your toast kids" is fucking monstrous, and should be considered a war crime on the part of the military those young men and women belong to.

What it boils down to is this: if war is occasionally, unfortunately, justifiable & necessary, then you prepare to prosecute that war as hard, deadly, and effectively as you can. That means it is moral to develop new weapons in the service of that aim, and that it is immoral to not protect and arm your troops as well as you can afford & design. If you are willing to ask someone to fight and die for your country in the military, you owe it to

I'm not disagreeing that war is sometimes necessary if your aim is to prevent even greater human suffering.

I would question the nature of involvement in Kosovo and Kuwait. 20th century Kuwait, like Israel, is an artificial construction of British retreat designed to maintain regional resource and military control. Historically governed from Basra with a degree of autonomy, it was defended by Britain from the Ottoman Empire having gained total control of Iraq. Yet when that Empire fell and Britain took the b

Sure, you could argue that Kuwait was a construct of the western powers after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, but if you want to argue that, then you must also concede that modern Iraq is primarily a result of that same process. In which case, Iraq had no more "right" to Kuwait than anybody else. We can argue the merits of carving up the Ottoman Empire after world war 1 ad nauseam, and point out how it laid the groundwork for much of the conflict in the present middle east, but you can't say "Kuwait was h

On the rare occasion that weapons aren't just built for the sake of defense industry profits and dig-hole-fill-hole economic stimulus, the USA almost always uses/sells them for bad purposes.

This statement is way too charged to respond to in any depth. You are framing the discussion in a way that says nearly every bit of military spending is:1) Intended to line the pockets of a few rich executives in the defense/aerospace industry;2) Intended to just circulate money around the economy with no real militar

Abandonment of defense research is probably the worse possible idea.Violent dickheads exist. You know how I know? because right now america is the worlds dickhead.Agressive military powers are not a fake bogeyman.There are pleanty of them in the world.

America deals with the problem by being the biggest and most agressive.someone else would just take up that title.

I'm not even american and I can see that their tactics while not nice have a ki

many of these technologies trickle down to civilian use, and make America, and its allies, a more comfortable place to live.

Without some/.er making another wrong "reductio ad Hitlerum" accusation, I ask: so what? It's possible to use cruel experimentation to find out all sorts of information which eventually has positive applications, but that alone doesn't justify it. Why not omit the intermediate step?

Boeing and Lockheed Martin manufacture just almost as much commercial air equipment as they do military equipment.

Does this mean they must develop military equipment in order to develop civilian equipment? Can you think of other ways of funding and performing research and development?

Why is working for Raytheon (or any other defense contractor) implied to be an *immoral* choice?

I'm interested.

("Make love not war" is naive nonsense, of course - why really? Is it just that you don't bother thinking through the consequences of trying to live in a dangerous world without any means for defending yourself?)

Why is working for Raytheon (or any other defense contractor) implied to be an *immoral* choice?

That wasn't implied in the question at all. I was hoping to understand why Raytheon employees consider it moral. I want to do that by understanding what their system of morality is and then learning how they used it to make the conclusion that working at Raytheon is moral.

I can't imply that working at Raytheon is immoral without forcing a system of morality on you, but I'm not doing that - I want to know what yours is.

Is it just that you don't bother thinking through the consequences of trying to live in a dangerous world without any means for defending yourself?

You might want to read the thread. In "working for Raytheon" vs "no means for defending yo

Your original question is certainly weighted and strongly indicative of what you consider moral - go back and reread it, and tell me if there's any way to interpret that except that you believe it to be a monstrously immoral decision, since you can't conceive of or offer any rationale that would be moral?

And for the record, you implying something doesn't mean that I have had your morality forced on me, or that I agree with, or accept, your implication.:)

And, full disclosure: I do not currently work for a defense contractor, but I have interviewed with several, most recently for a job in which I would have been working on several military aircraft control systems for BAE. I declined the job offer because the pay offered was not what I had hoped for, and we couldn't reach an agreeable number. If the pay had been in line with what I wanted, I would have had no moral issue with accepting the position whatsoever, and would certainly have no issue with applyi

Morality goes out the window often when it comes to feeding and providing for one's family especially when military industrial complex makes so much more money than other industries.

I tend to agree with you on the point that it is rather immoral to support the war machinery, but them you also have to look to the government which supplies the "demand" portion of the bargain. But for better or worse, it is quite true that defense technologies are quite often adapted for peaceful civilian use and quite succes